Kerry Defends Race-Based Set-Asides

The indispensable AADAP mailing list has sent a New York Sun article that appeared last Friday discussing John Kerry’s past, and recent, defense of race-based set-asides. (The Sun, alas, is a subscription-only site. A copy of the article should be available on the AADAP web site shortly.)

“I have fought consistently for affirmative action, for set-aside programs,” Kerry recently told NPR. “I fought to hold on to the set-aside programs fro minority-owned businesses.” When he wasn’t fighting for these programs, however, Fighting John was busy fighting the suspicion that he was less than a true believer in these programs, suspicions based on his increasingly well-known 1992 speech at Yale insisting that the costs of affirmative action not be ignored.

Too many politicians, particularly in my own party, have not acknowledged those costs for fear of undermining the very goals of affirmative action.

“The truth is that affirmative action has kept American thinking in racial terms,” Mr. Kerry said, adding, “Somewhere within that vast apparatus conjured up to fight racism there exists a reality of reverse

discrimination.”

As the Sun article and others have pointed out, that speech casued “a political firestorm,” and Kerry quickly backed away

Less well-known is an episode from three years earlier. As the Sun article reports:

An early and overlooked episode in the senator’s political education on race came in May of 1989. Affirmative action was in trouble. The Supreme Court had just struck down a race-based set-aside program for construction contracts in Richmond, Virginia. In some quarters, there were fears that all race-conscious programs at every level of government were about to be dismantled.

Against that backdrop, Mr. Kerry strode into a meeting of minority contractors in Boston.

Mr. Kerry was then and is now a proponent of programs that set-aside government contracts for minorities, but on that day he appeared to attempt to educate the largely black audience about what he said were white attitudes on the subject.

“You’re dealing with a lot of people who came into this country 60, 70 years ago, 80 years ago, 100 years ago, whatever. Didn’t speak a word of language in this country. Nobody helped,” Mr. Kerry explained. “I’ll tell you, there weren’t any Yankee bankers lending a lot of money to Irishmen and Italians in those early years and they kind of struggled along. Correct?”

Some in the audience clearly believed the senator was taunting them.

“We don’t want to offend them? To hell with them!” shouted Robert McCoy, the African-American owner of a landscaping firm.

“What I tried to describe to you is the politics of the situation and how people feel. Now, you can ignore how they feel, or you can decide you want to walk over how they feel, or you can decide it’s irrelevant how they feel,” Mr. Kerry said.

“What about how we feel? I’m not worried about how they feel,” an exasperated Mr. McCoy declared.

Mr. Kerry chided him. “Well, if you don’t worry about how other people feel, we’re in trouble,” he said.

The exchange was captured by a crew from the local public television station, WGBH.

Having gotten burned from flirting with doubts about party orthodoxy, Fighting John has been so busy fighting for racial set-asides that he has apparently forgotten his earlier indiscretions.